The Wandering Albatross

The strongest ocean current in the world is the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, coursing through the narrowest chokepoint around the White Continent. Average water flow is 4.77 billion cubic feet, over 600 times the volume of the Amazon River. With 40 foot waves and 50 mph winds, the Drake Passage from Argentina to Antarctica is a uniquely violent journey believed to have caused thousands of shipwrecks. I’m sitting by the window watching the world churn. The boat is pitching—skyrocketing up and plummeting down over wave after wave. If not for the gentle hum of the engine, I wouldn’t know we are moving forward. From the front observation deck, I can feel split seconds of weightlessness, where my throat becomes a vacuum and heart strands get caught between my teeth. Anyone with any sense is in their cabin, hiding from seasickness under ceilings, sheets, and eyelids. A smooth, dark silhouette fills the window, interrupting the vast expanse of otherwise empty sky. At first, I think it’s a spot in my vision– a hallucination from too many nights at sea. How could this stranger, this creature of solitude, find us here? Lifted by long, sleek wings, the massive bird glides across the air as if it’s a solid surface. With dark eyes narrowed ahead, it tilts back and forth on its axis to catch the harsh gusts. The sea falls to its knees at first brush with the bird’s wingtips, a kiss that stops at the lips, suspending itself in the air. Last night, Marten, an expedition leader and ornithologist, presented a PowerPoint about the wandering albatross. We sat on the floor like young children, watching him click through videos breaking down the bird’s flight patterns. The albatross flies in a unique style called dynamic soaring, which involves gracefully swooping through wave troughs on a cyclical path. Carving elegant lines through the sky, it can fly for a thousand miles without flapping its wings. Marten’s eyes glinted as he told us the birds spend the first five to six years of their lives without ever touching land. They can circumnavigate the globe in 46 days, sleeping with half their brain at a time. From behind the window, I watch the white-headed albatross swoop and fall and glide, tracing its flight path with my pointer finger. It is a being of wind and power, one of the elements rather than fauna. In one of my favorite poems, Samuel Coleridge’s lyrical ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a sailor shoots an innocent albatross for no apparent reason, cursing his voyage. The crew endures storms, spirits, and haunting mist as the dead bird hangs over the captain’s neck, a symbol of curse and punishment. The albatross’s mistreatment at human hands signifies the plight of the poet, violent acts against nature with catastrophic consequences, and individual sacrifice. Compulsory storytelling. The bird’s white head dips forward as it catches a gust and effortlessly outruns the ship along the air. My breath fogs up the window glass. Where are you going? Where have you been? What is it like to live surrounded by nothing but air and water, to fade into the horizon day after day? What do you miss? What can you call your own? The albatross answers with a glittering downward swoop. The first time I step on Antarctic land, I am so far away from home that my body is no longer my own. Blue ice crystals glow around my feet as far as I can see, hanging over themselves and creeping forward as time stands still. Every so often a chunk screeches and splashes into the churning ocean. Snowflakes bundle and roll, speckling the harsh slopes of jagged mountains. I picture a holy-handed giant taking a pocket knife to a block of obsidian, carving away sharp bits. Eating each slice of rock off the knife, one by one, then disappearing into the sky. I wade through water so clear and smooth I would try to mold it like clay if I didn’t know any better. I try to survey it all, but my gaze keeps snagging on rock piles and tumbling into snowbanks and slipping down the sides of icebergs into the silent ocean. I feel like I could melt into my feet, or catch a draft of wind and plummet upwards to the tips of the black mountains. I wonder if the sun still sets somewhere, if the streetlamps in my neighborhood still flicker, if the world is still spinning the same way, if I have ever been anywhere else, if I am still my mother’s daughter. If someone reached out and touched me right now, would their hand pass straight through me? I am stuck in time but nowhere in space, existing only elsewhere. I wonder if the wandering albatross leaves a piece of itself on every wind it catches, drawing lines around the globe. Ancient mythology refers to the albatross as the Prince of the Wave, a mystical spirit of lost sailors possessing healing powers and prophesizing divine fortune. By observing these birds, sailors adjusted their course to avoid harsh weather. To hurt an albatross, as demonstrated by Coleridge, was to unleash the wrath of the sea. When I was younger, I couldn’t fall asleep without first finding the North star out my window, or guessing where it was on cloudy nights. In a place where the sun does not set, what do you center your world around? What is it like to be as untethered and alone as the albatross, beak careening forward through empty space? On the seventh night, we leave the ship, hauling packs twice our size. Anthonie and Kai trek in heavy red coats, testing snow and whispering hastily in Dutch. Finally, they decide on a somewhat flat plot of snow as far as possible from seals and avalanche risks. They hand out shovels like goodie bags at a child’s birthday party, if candy and toys could protect from 20 mile per hour winds. Antarctic gusts are in the rare category of things you can only burrow under, never climb over or stand against. When it’s finally my turn with the shovel, I feel like I am digging my own grave. I lay down to mark the size hole I need, then hack into the snow. Fine powder scatters to the breeze every time the spade goes over my shoulder. I am cutting into the Earth’s southern crown, making room for myself in a place unlike anywhere I have ever been. Once I’ve dug a three-foot deep coffin, I gently arrange my two sleeping bags and tuck myself in facing the still-bright sky. Sharp gusts tumble over me, and I welcome the cool air as it buries itself in my lungs. As the temperature drops, snow crystals begin to freeze around me, molding an imprint of my body. In my mind, I am here to stay. I will crawl into this shoveled-out cove each night, watching the animals around me to know when it’s time to sleep. I will live off of mackerel icefish and Antarctic cod and melted snow. Each morning I will make it a little bit farther up the mountain and carve words into the rock, and then retreat. After a while, I will stop thinking about what I am writing. I could really do it. I lay on my back with my eyes open, breathing in the southern sky. A wispy cloud rolls down toward me, obscuring the mountaintop. Every so often, little gentoo penguins splash in and out of the water, always in groups—unlike the albatross, with its commanding wings and daunting spirit. For the first time since meeting it, I feel a dull ache for this mystical creature with no dwelling, this lonely flier. I pull my blankets tighter around me and sink into the earth’s embrace. I don’t know if I managed to sleep tonight, but I know I woke up. The crushing melody of Anthonie’s boots on the snow’s brittle surface invites me back to my mind. It’s four a.m., and we have a long passage to the next island. Once my eyes adjust to the light and I remember where and who I am, I grab a shovel from my neighbor and begin refilling my bedroom with snow. I pack it in and pat it gently, evening the surface so that there is no trace of my stay. I kneel silently atop my handiwork until my knees are soaked and it’s time to go. Back on the ship, I find my body in the same seat on the observation deck. The waves are gentler closer to the shore, and we are rolling side to side rather than pitching. I’m not sure how long I sit hugging my shins before I see it. Another albatross, beak open, dancing up and down along drafts. This time, I don’t question its solitary trajectory or spiritual meaning or how and why it can only chase or flee. I watch the polar breeze wrap itself around the bird’s wingtips and think about interlacing my fingers with my best friend. I watch the sea meet its feathered underbelly as it swoops downward and remember every time I fell asleep in the car as a child and my parents carried me to my bed, every leaf pile my brothers and I jumped into during the early Autumns of growing up, and every pendant a friend has fastened around my neck for me. I think of the way the spirit of the ocean protects the albatross, and let it glide out of my sight.